IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecanpo/v87y2025icp1909-1926.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor mobility and corporate wage inequity: Evidence from the Hukou reform in China

Author

Listed:
  • Qin, Ni
  • Zeng, Junwei
  • Wang, Qiyao

Abstract

This paper investigates the causal effect of labor mobility on corporate wage inequity. By using China’s Hukou reform in 2014 as an exogenous shock, we find that labor mobility is positively associated with corporate wage inequity. Our results are robust to a series of endogeneity and robustness analyses. One potential mechanism driving our results is that the Hukou reform has increased the labor supply in cities, thus reducing employee wage, especially for ordinary employees, and contributing to an increase in corporate wage inequity. Our results are more significant in regions with high institutional quality, or high labor demand and firms with high labor productivity, or low corporate social responsibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Qin, Ni & Zeng, Junwei & Wang, Qiyao, 2025. "Labor mobility and corporate wage inequity: Evidence from the Hukou reform in China," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1909-1926.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:87:y:2025:i:c:p:1909-1926
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2025.07.042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592625003169
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eap.2025.07.042?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:87:y:2025:i:c:p:1909-1926. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/economic-analysis-and-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.